


It's Not My Face You Dreamed Of But I'm Here

by squirrel_whisperer



Category: Preacher (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Road Trips, Unrequited Love, also my first fic since HSM came out i am RUSTY, cassidy is a sap, murder bonding, reverse bed-sharing trope, this is so full of spoilers guys, tulip is an actual old-school vengeful goddess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-16
Updated: 2016-07-16
Packaged: 2018-07-24 08:53:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7501995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squirrel_whisperer/pseuds/squirrel_whisperer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cassidy steps out with a prayer. That’s the really funny thing about it. One last silent plea to an uncaring universe that he’s not wrong about Jesse Custer being a good man after all, and then he’s bathing in ravaging sunlight. (Spoilers for episode 'He Gone')</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am sorry I don't even know what this is. I just had a real need after the events of 'He Gone' for Cassidy and Tulip to run away together and BadgerSigil egged me on.  
> Also I tried to capture both of their voices but I'm neither Irish nor Texan so...eh?

Cassidy steps out with a prayer. That’s the really funny thing about it. One last silent plea to an uncaring universe that he’s not wrong about Jesse Custer being a good man after all, and then he’s bathing in ravaging sunlight. For what seems like hours, the world is nothing but fire. Fire and pain, and some distant screeching noise that must be his screaming, before the flames blister down his throat and shut that right up again. He feels the flesh bubbling and burning away from his scorched, dry bones. Has a brief, horrifying moment where he can smell his hair sizzling to ash, and then there’s nothing. Nothing but the thought that the bastard _actually let him burn_ , before the darkness welcomes Cassidy in like a lover’s embrace. He doesn’t even try to fight it.

When he wakes up again, he tries to scream, but his vocal chords aren’t there. He can’t see anything, either. Has an awful feeling his eyeballs have melted out of his skull, which is a new experience, it has to be said.  
“Oh my god, Cassidy!” Tulip’s voice cuts through his own internal soundtrack of shrieking and profanity, and then his equilibrium tilts, like he’s been rolled over, and he can’t actually think through the agony of it all. “Cassidy, is that you? Please don’t be dead, don’t you dare be dead. Christ, what did he _do???_ ”  
Cassidy tries to move. He tries to speak. He tries to do anything that might take the edge of panic out of her gorgeous, straight-from-the-heavens voice, but nothing happens. Christ, but he should be dead, he really should.  
“It’s okay, hold on.” Tulip says. Cassidy has the vague sensation of pressure against whatever’s left of his lips, and then something on his mangled tongue. It’s difficult to tell without any nerve endings left in there, but after a moment he feels something hit his stomach and he realises as the warmth of it spreads through him that it’s blood. Tulip’s giving him blood, the wonderful, darling girl!  
“Just hold on, okay?” Tulip says again, and that’s all Cassidy can do. His body comes roaring back to life as the blood works its magic (and Christ if he’ll ever get used to the feeling of his skin knitting itself back together). It’s slow going. A few greedy slurps from Tulip’s dainty wrist are never going to be enough to heal the results of a full-body combustion. He’d have to drain her completely and damned if he’s doing that. So Cassidy grabs her arm as soon as he’s able and wrenches his mouth away.  
“Hey, that’s enough, sweetheart.” His voice comes out rougher than a badger’s arse, but the effort of speaking doesn’t seem to be doing any damage, so that’s a start. “Don’t want you doin’ yerself an injury on my account, now.” He manages to pry open his eyes (not melted then) and sees her scowling down at him, with the last dying rays of golden sunshine fading on the horizon behind her. They’re on the church porch, under the shade of the awning. Not the spot where he remembers falling to his knees in a ball of fire before a bug-eyed Jesse. Strange…  
“You ain’t healed yet,” she says. There’s a stubborn set to her mouth that Cassidy fancies a lot of school teachers learned to be wary of when she was a young girl, and he wonders how an old sinner like him ever earned the right to have that awesome fury aimed at his well being.  
“I’m healed enough, it’s fine. Much obliged, though.” He forces his mouth into a grin, or as close as he can manage considering the rawness of the barely-healed tissue, but he can’t quite sell the humour and they both know it. Suddenly the tiredness hits him, like a boot to the chest, and he can’t quite get a good breath in him. He lets the grin drop. “You were right,” he says. “He wasn’t okay with it.” The urge to cry is strong enough that it threatens to manifest actual tears, but thankfully Tulip pretends not to notice.  
“Come on. Let’s get you out of here.” She gets an arm underneath his ribs and hauls him upright. Cassidy mostly keeps the groans of pain to a minimum, but they’re enough for her to hesitate after a few steps. “You good?” she asks.  
Cassidy gives a soft grin, genuine this time. “Yeah, darlin’. I’m good.”  
Tulip nods and goes to move forward again, but something makes her pause and really study his face for a second. For the life of him, he can’t work out what it is she’s thinking, and then she gently cups his cheek with her free hand. Cassidy helplessly closes his eyes against the sensation of her thumb brushing along his tender skin, tracing scar tissue that hopefully won’t be there for long, and then it’s gone, and she’s dragging him forward again, eyes straight ahead. There’s a bloody handprint left behind from the cut on her palm that she fed him with, and Cassidy, being the idiot that he is, falls for her all over again.

Tulip drives them to the hospital, in spite of feeling a wee bit woozy from blood loss (not that she was admitting it) and leaves Cassidy stretched out in the back seat while she heads inside. Twenty minutes later she emerges with three blood bags that she hid God-knows-where, and Cassidy guzzles them down in record time, not without an ungentlemanly amount of slurping, it must be said. The relief of it is _exquisite_. He takes a long, luxurious moment to just appreciate being hale and whole again before he heaves himself upright and leans over the front seat. Tulip doesn’t acknowledge him, just sits with her hands on the wheel, staring off into the distance and breathing quick, shallow breaths in and out through her nose.  
“That’s me firmly in your debt, now, love,” Cassidy says, in a voice much more resembling his usual fare. “Not sure how I’ll be repaying you, though. All I’ve got to offer is me nubile body right here.” He adds a salacious wink for effect, but Tulip doesn’t so much as blink, let alone look at him, so it falls a bit flat. “Hey now, you doin’ okay there?” Cassidy risks a hand on Tulip’s shoulder, and it seems to snap her out of whatever has her brooding the way she is, as she suddenly whips her head around to face him.  
“You wanna get out of here?” she asks. There’s a wounded ferocity in her eyes that hits Cassidy right in his core, and there’s no doubt in his mind that she’s not just talking about the parking lot of the hospital.  
“And where exactly would we be going?” He doesn’t really need to know. He’d follow her anywhere at this point, but something important has shifted for Tulip, that much he can tell, and it’s probably best to find out what he’s diving into here.  
“We’re gonna go kill Carlos. You and me. Right now. “ Tulip’s knuckles curl white over the wheel . She’s so tense Cassidy can practically see her vibrating in the seat. Her urgency is intoxicating, but Cassidy still has the memory of ‘I’m his girlfriend!’ ringing fresh in his ears, and he knows he’s not really the one she wants coming along on this ride with her.  
“What about Jesse?” he asks, and he hates himself a little for that. Tulip’s lip curves up on a sneer.  
“I’m done waiting around for that asshole. Now, are you coming or not?”  
Cassidy takes stock of himself, and this involves looking down at his freshly-healed-and-hairless body to see that his tattoos are all gone, which is a bit heart breaking, and also that he’s completely in the buff. That shirt and hoodie are probably still lying where he left them in the dirt, and his trousers must have burned up with him while Jesse watched on in disgust. _Jesus_ but talk about literally burning your bridges…  
“Alright,” he says, as he clambers into the front seat, wilfully ignoring the sudden stab of hurt in his poor old chest. “I might be needing some clothes first, mind.”  
Tulip turns on the ignition with a smile that feels like a victory. “That can be arranged...”

They stop off at her uncle’s place to pick up some suitable Cassidy-sized attire, and then it’s straight off into the night. Tulip drives for as long as she’s able, which is until about midnight, and then Cassidy takes over while she catches some shut-eye in the back. There’s not much scenery to keep his wandering mind occupied, especially with the darkness closing in around them everywhere the headlights fail to touch, and he keeps absently rubbing his hand over his bare scalp just to feel the smoothness of it. If he concentrates, he can listen to the steady thump of Tulip’s heart beating while she sleeps, and that’s a lovely thing. That soothes some restless part of him that keeps thinking back on the flames and that little arsey-kid roasting in hellfire and two bloody actual angels wielding a chainsaw and a tin can. Fuckin’ Annville, what a nightmare of a town to have crash-landed in, by all accounts.

He pulls over when the first hints of sunrise start bleeding up into the sky so he can climb onto the back seat floor with a blanket thrown over him. Tulip glares at him when he jostles her awake in the process, but he’ll not be taking any chances with that bastard any time again soon, thank you very much, so he pays her no mind. Not even when she sits up and stretches out some cricks in her neck, giving him a lovely close-up view of her toned little stomach with her back all arched just so. The vicious tease.  
“Where abouts are we?” she asks. Cassidy shrugs.  
“Fucked if I know. Haven’t hit a town yet, that’s all I can tell ya.”  
She sighs and climbs over him to get back in the driver’s seat. “Well did we hit a diner at least? I don’t know about you but I’m starving.”  
“Probably about twenty minutes in the other direction.”  
“Right.”  
Tulip turns the car around with a little more force than necessary and speeds off back the way they came. 

The diner, when they reach it, is a tiny blip of a place that looks like one of those buildings people loot in zombie films. There’s a sign proclaiming them to be open flickering by the door but that’s the only indication of life to be seen. Once they’re parked out front, Tulip gets out, opens the door behind Cassidy’s head and peeks under his blanket.  
“You coming in, or do you want me to bring you something?”  
He eyes up the distance between the car and the front door. It’s not too far, and the diner itself has but one window to speak of. Should be fine.  
“Promise to put me out if I catch alight, now?”  
Tulip rolls her eyes. “Pinkie promise. Now come on. I’m hungry!”  
Cassidy shuffles out of the car with an iron grip on his blanket and Tulip shoves him forward into the diner. He gets in free from incident and slides into a booth away from the reach of the sunlight before shrugging off the blanket. The elderly woman behind the counter gives him a strange look for it, but Tulip meets her stare and doesn’t back down until the old dear coughs and starts rummaging in her apron for her notepad.  
“Fancy splittin’ a milkshake?” Cassidy smirks over the top of his menu. Tulip doesn’t even glance up.  
“No I do not.”   
“Fair enough.”  
The waitress comes over and takes their order, and then it’s just the two of them. Cassidy does what he always does and compulsively fills the silence.  
“So what changed, then? With Jesse, I mean. Why leave now?”  
Tulip scowls at the mention of Jesse’s name, but Cassidy doesn’t miss the way she folds her arms around herself, fingers curling defensively over her elbows. Angry _and_ hurt, then. Always a dangerous combination.  
“You were right,” she says. “He’s not the man I thought he was.” Cassidy waits for further explanation, but it doesn’t come. Tulip just stares down at the table in front of her, radiating pain. For once, Cassidy figures it’s best to leave it alone.  
“Alright then, change of subject it is! Tell me now, what are your top five Coen brother films? And don’t be saying The Big Lebowski just to cheese me off, I won’t appreciate it…”  
She laughs, quietly and like she can’t quite believe she’s ended up where she is, but she laughs all the same, and Cassidy basks in the feeling of making that happen. He thinks, with a sickening sort of dread, that he could really get used to that sound. God help him…


	2. Chapter 2

Turns out Carlos is holed up in a swanky studio apartment, right in the middle of bloody Chihuahua City, of all places. They hit the Mexico border before it’s even lunch time, and Tulip gets waved straight through without so much as a ‘hold up there, missy, let us check your undercarriage’, which Cassidy finds quite impressive. “I got friends in Border Control,” she informs him with a shrug, like that’s totally normal. Cassidy files that away under his list of reasons to love the girl, and goes back to humming old Irish songs under his breath. She doesn’t tell him to shut up, and as they drive further into Mexico, a strange sense of calm settles over Cassidy. He lets it sink deep into his bones, fully aware that it’s not going to be lasting much longer. Before he’s even aware of it he’s listening to Tulip’s heartbeat again, and just like that, Cassidy is drifting off to sleep like the proverbial baby.

He gets rudely awoken some time later by the car lurching to a not-so-gentle stop. He smacks his head against the front seat when he gets thrown around on the floor by the momentum, and lets of out few garbled curse words in protest.  
“Sorry,” says Tulip, though she doesn’t sound terribly sorry at all. “We’re in the city. Just hit some bad traffic.”  
Cassidy can’t see shite from beneath the blanket, but sure enough he can hear the chaos outside, all car horns and idling engines and far too many people speaking Spanish at once. He can also feel the heat of the sun coming in through the window, so he’ll be stuck under his cover for a while, it seems. “What’s this Carlos fella like, then?” he asks. “Aside from a bein’ a backstabbin’ bastard and all.”  
Tulip stays quiet for a long time. Long enough that Cassidy starts thinking he’s being ignored, and he’s trying to come up with a more palatable conversational topic than ‘tell me more about the man we’re going to murder’ when she interrupts him with an answer.  
“He was funny. I liked him. We both liked him. Until we didn’t…”  
Jesse’s name hangs heavy in the following silence, unspoken but still louder than the sounds of an entire city around them. Cassidy doesn’t have to ask if Tulip wishes he was doing this with her instead. He knows he’s an interloper on this journey, but then he always is, isn’t he? That’s old Proinsias Cassidy’s standard setting, so it is. The eternal shambolic tag-along. Besides, he kind of wishes Jesse was here himself. Wishes Jesse had taken him up on that first suggestion of a road trip and gotten the fuck out of Dodge when he had the chance. Before they found out about Genesis and he got the insane notion into his head that it was God’s bloody will for him to go mad with power and send kids off to hell, all willy nilly. Then again, if they had, then Cassidy wouldn’t have had the chance to become acquainted with Tulip, and that would have been a real crying shame.  
“He going to be puttin’ up much of a fight?” he asks, trying to distract himself from his sudden onset of melancholy. Christ, but he needs a drink…  
“Not if we surprise him,” Tulip says, and the danger is back in her voice with a vengeance. Cassidy spectacularly fails to ignore the thrill that sends down his spine. He’s in trouble with this one, no doubt about it…

The traffic’s an absolute _bastard_ all the way into the city centre, so the sun’s just starting to slip down behind the skyscrapers by the time Tulip announces they’ve reached their destination. Cassidy gingerly pops his head up to peer out the window. He sees a very tall building with a very fancy security guard and a lot of stairs. Not exactly Fort Knox then.  
Some rich-looking bloke walks up to the front door with a near identical beauty hanging off each arm, and the guard waves him in with ‘Welcome back, Mister Carlos’, if Cassidy’s ears aren’t mistaken. Tulip’s absolutely rigid with tension, and she’s produced a gun from somewhere that Cassidy completely missed before. Her fingers flex around the hilt, but her finger stays off the trigger, and after a moment she opens the glove compartment and puts it away again.  
“We come back here at 1am,” she says. “In the meantime, we get some sleep. I’ve waited too long for this, no way in hell I’m screwing it up now.”  
Cassidy nods. “Fine by me, darlin’.”

They find a hotel a few blocks away. Tulip asks for one room, and Cassidy raises a very pointed eyebrow at her when it transpires to be a double. “Now are ye tryin’ to seduce me, Miss O’Hare?” He’s poking fun, of course, but Tulip’s all business when she slinks up to him and grabs two fistfuls of his over-sized t-shirt.  
“Don’t have to try…” She kisses him then, like it’s her entire life’s mission, with bruising force and the sharp sting of teeth. His arms circle around her body entirely of their own volition, and a moan rumbles low in his throat as he surrenders to it. She’s warm and soft, and she tastes like cigarettes, and Cassidy feels like he’s on fire all over again when her tongue slides _just so_ against his. Next thing he knows, he’s lying on the bed with Tulip straddling his hips and she’s slowly peeling off her top. He’s so turned on he feels about ready to blow a bloody gasket, but something feels off.  
“Woah now, hold on there, sweetheart.” He sits up on his elbows and tries to shimmy up the bed to get his hips less snug against hers. “What exactly is going on here?”  
Tulip laughs. “You want a diagram?” She shifts back up Cassidy’s body and _grinds_ down, and he hisses despite himself. Has to get his hands on her hips to hold her still.  
“No, I mean, this isn’t…I’m gonna help you no matter what, love, you don’t have to do this to seal the deal. You know?”  
Tulip stops moving and stares at him. “Seriously. You don’t wanna do this?”  
“Well, not unless you want to, no.”  
“Huh.” She hops off of him and sits up against the headboard, giving Cassidy the occasional sideways glance like she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. “Well, what now then?”  
Cassidy shrugs. “Now we go to sleep, like ye said, and then we wake up fresh as daisies and go and kill yer man Carlos, like what we came here for. There’s no need to be complicatin’ it now, is there?”  
“I guess there’s not.” Tulip smiles at him softly, something close to grateful, and that hits him deep in his chest, it has to be said. He actually blushes when she leans over and plants a gentle kiss on his cheek, before disappearing into the bathroom. He busies himself with taking off his shoes and his shirt, and then deliberates on which side of the bed to take. Figures it might be polite to let Tulip choose first, be a gentleman and all. “I sleep on the right!” she shouts through the bathroom door, making him jump. Well then, left it is…

Cassidy is all settled and dozing when Tulip emerges again. He cracks an eye open and sees that she’s changed into a loose t-shirt and scrubbed her face clean of makeup. She’s so gorgeous in herself that Cassidy can’t keep the words from tumbling past his lips, “You’re bloody gorgeous, you are…”  
Tulip ducks her head and snorts softly. “Thanks.” She switches off the light and climbs in beside him, and Cassidy’s eyes have just about adjusted to the dark when he feels her shift over and snuggle into his side. “Sweet dreams, Cassidy,” she whispers. Her breath skates across his chest, right over his heart, and if it still beat then it would probably be pounding right out of his ribcage.  
“And yerself, love,” he replies around the lump just formed in his throat. Tulip sighs and her breathing evens out as sleep takes her under. It’s not even a minute before Cassidy is doing the same.

Carlos dies the next morning in the middle of the desert.  
It doesn’t happen quickly, or quietly, and it definitely isn’t clean. He goes out screaming, choking on his own blood, and without apologising to Tulip once. That puts him straight at the top of Cassidy’s list of Right Proper Arseholes, which is extensive to say the least, and that’s before the bastard corpse spits blood right into his bloody eyeball when they try moving it. Cassidy is a little bit in awe, truth be told. He’s seen some right carnage in his time - including actual war - but watching Tulip O’Hare dole out some good old-fashioned justice for old Carlos there was really something else. He watches her dig in the fading starlight, blood splattered over her face and stained right through her clothes, and if he hadn’t already been head-over-heels for her then he reckons that sight alone would have done it.  
“You gonna help?” she snaps when she catches him staring, and right, yep, body-disposal, should be doing that, absolutely.

They’re just about done when the rising sun gets strong enough to chase Cassidy back into the car. Tulip follows soon after, panting and filthy and _tired_ , and she collapses into the driver’s seat with a groan. She sits in silence, and Cassidy shifts underneath his blanket, and the car slowly fills with the scent of death.  
“So what...now?”  
Tulip sighs. “I have no idea.” Again, the atmosphere is thick with Jesse’s unspoken name. Cassidy imagines she had a nice little ride off into the sunset planned for the pair of them, going back to whatever life they had together before. He’s not included in that fantasy scenario, he knows, although there’s no real reason he sees that he couldn’t be.  
“Look,” he says, arranging the blanket so he can sit up and look at Tulip from the car floor. “I know I’m not yer man, but I meant it when I said I was in your debt before, I mean that’s three times you’ve saved my life now and I’ll go with you wherever you want…”  
Tulip turns around and meets his eyes, brows knitted together in confusion. “What was the third time?”  
The question throws Cassidy a bit. He counts off on his fingers. “Well, there was the driving me to the hospital after the window thing...partly your fault, mind, but I’ll count it anyway for that kiss. Then you put me out after I took me little stroll in the sunshine, and you gave me blood. Although I suppose those two are part and parcel of the same incident, so maybe’s I should count them together. So twice, then. Fair enough. Anyway, doesn’t matter, I still…”  
“I didn’t put you out.”  
That halts Cassidy’s train of thought right in it’s fucking tracks. “What?”  
“I didn’t put you out. I found you outside all burned up, and I gave you blood, but you were already covered in foam, out of the sun. Jesse must have done that much. You don’t remember?”  
Cassidy does not remember, what with the agony of being on fire taking up most of his attention at the time. His last image was Jesse’s horrified face and he just assumed...but if he did put him out after all…  
“Oh, _Jesus_ …” The realisation hits him hard enough to force a panicked bark of laughter. Jesse wasn’t completely lost to Genesis after all. There was still hope for the man, and instead of being there to help him, Cassidy was in another bloody country on a murder-road trip with the man’s girlfriend. “Well I’m a bloody fool.”  
Tulip snorts. “Don’t feel too bad about it, he’s still an asshole. Came in straight after and spat insults at me, just like his daddy taught him. I really thought he was different, you know? But a few months rotting in that town and he’s just like the rest of ‘em.”  
“No, Tulip, you don’t understand, he needs our help.” Tulip raises an eyebrow at him, but Cassidy barrells on before she can interrupt. “There’s this thing, right? This power that’s got into him. Some angel-demon bastard, and it’s twisting him right up in his noggin, makin’ him make some really poor choices by all accounts. People are hunting him for it, but he won’t give it up. I’ve been trying to convince him, but he genuinely believes, right, he actually thinks that this thing is given to him by the Man Upstairs Himself, so he can save your shite little town, or some nonsense. And he’s gettin’ drunk on the power, and he’s goin’ to get himself killed, or worse, and we have to go back, Tulip. He needs us, so he does.”  
Tulip blinks at him. She does not look convinced. “Angel-demon bastard power?”  
“Look, I know how it sounds…”  
“It sounds crazy.”  
“I know.”  
“Even if that was all true…”  
“It is.”  
Tulip rolls her eyes. “Even if it was true...why would I want to help him? He didn’t wanna help me.”  
Cassidy smiles at that, because of all the stupid questions, really now. “Because you love him.”  
Tulip clenches her jaw. Her eyes go bright and wide, and she turns away from Cassidy with a huff. Her arms come up to wrap around herself and she chews on a thumbnail for a while, before suddenly slamming her palms against the steering wheel, over and over again. “Dammit!!!” She catches her breath and then turns the keys in the ignition. “Well I guess we’re going back to Annville, then.”  
Cassidy gets thrown backwards when Tulip drives off a little more quickly than necessary, but he keeps his complaints to himself and settles back onto the floor. He only hopes Jesse hasn’t gotten himself into too much trouble by himself…


End file.
